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Sinan Aral
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Sinan Aral a global authority on business analytics; award-winning researcher; entrepreneur, and venture capitalist. He is the David Austin Professor of Management, Marketing, IT and Data Science at MIT, Director of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy (IDE) and a founding partner at Manifest Capital. He was the chief scientist at SocialAmp, one of the first social commerce analytics companies (until its sale to Merkle in 2012) and at Humin, a social platform that the Wall Street Journal called the first “Social Operating System” (until its sale to Tinder in 2016). He is currently on the advisory boards of the Alan Turing Institute, the British National Institute for Data Science in London, the Center for Responsible Media Technology and Innovation in Bergen, Norway and C6 Bank, one of the first all-digital banks of Brazil.
His research has won numerous awards including the Microsoft Faculty Fellowship, the PopTech Science Fellowship, an NSF CAREER Award, a Fulbright Scholarship, and the Jamieson Award for Teaching Excellence (MIT Sloan’s highest teaching honor). In 2014, he was named one of the “World’s Top 40 Business School Professors Under 40.” In 2018, he became the youngest ever recipient of the Herbert Simon Award of Rajk László College in Budapest, Hungary. In the same year, his article on the spread of false news online was published on the cover of Science and became the second most influential scientific publication of the year in any discipline, and his TED talk on “Protecting Truth in the Age of Misinformation,” which received over two million views in nine months, set the stage for today’s modern solutions to the misinformation crisis.
Sinan’s first book, The Hype Machine, which was named a 2020 Best Book on Artificial Intelligence by WIRED, a 2020 Porchlight Best “Big Ideas and New Perspectives” Book Award Winner and among the Best New Technology Books and Best New Economy Books to Read in 2021 by BookAuthority, became an instant classic.
Sinan earned his PhD at MIT and completed his Master’s degrees at the London School of Economics and at Harvard University. You can find him on Twitter @sinanaral and on Instagram @professorsinan.
Honors
Aral and Eckles win for a working paper
Aral’s efforts to address “fake news” recognized
Sinan Aral appointed to Scientific Advisory Board
Thinkers50 recognizes Aral
Aral wins Herbert Simon Award
"Fake news" research among the most discussed papers of 2018
Publications
Holtz, David, Ruben Lobel, Inessa Liskovich, and Sinan K. Aral. Management Science. Forthcoming. arXiv Preprint.
Yang, Jeremy, Dean Eckles, Paramveer Dhillon, and Sinan K. Aral. Management Science. Forthcoming. arXiv Preprint.
Wang, Hongchang, Sinan K. Aral, Erik Brynjolfsson, Chris Gu, and Duncan J. Wu. Management Information Systems Quarterly. Forthcoming.
Ju, Harang, Madhav Kumar, Ehsan Valavi, and Sinan K. Aral, MIT Sloan Working Paper 6972-23. Cambridge, MA: MIT Sloan School of Management, December 2023.
Ju, Harang, Madhav Kumar, Ehsan Valavi, and Sinan K. Aral, MIT Sloan Working Paper 6974-23. Cambridge, MA: MIT Sloan School of Management, December 2023.
Aral, Sinan K., Seth G. Benzell, Avinash Collis, and Christos Nicolaides, MIT Sloan Working Paper 6975-23. Cambridge, MA: MIT Sloan School of Management, December 2023.
Recent Insights
![](/sites/default/files/styles/3_up_second_slot/public/2024-06/iStock-1461370982.jpg?h=119335f7&itok=J-t26R52)
Rethinking urban mobility in Europe
The City of Leuven, Belgium sought to leverage digital technologies and advanced analytics to promote sustainable urban mobility. To make this happen, the city collaborated with global digital engineering company and Smart Industry leader Akkodis – and a team of Master of Business Analytics (MBAn) students taking Analytics Lab (A-Lab) couldn’t wait to join in.
![](/sites/default/files/styles/3_up_second_slot/public/2024-04/236_ENews_Sloanies_Startups_2880x960.png?h=5048d77a&itok=1paQxjaA)
How These Sloanies Are Propelling Startups Across MIT
At milemark•capital, three Sloan Fellows MBA program alumni and their professor are investing in early-stage startups propelled by diverse founders and AI.
Media Highlights
Most Americans think college degrees aren't worth the expense, according...
A paper by Sinan Aral and co-authors discovered that high-paying jobs often come through "weak ties" — for example, people who are acquaintances.
Scientific research showing that "acquaintances" are as important to emo...
An experiment, led by Sinan Aral, revealed that on platforms like LinkedIn, it is weak ties that make it easier to get a new job.
Supreme Court 'skeptical' of social media laws, professor says
"We know that AI is happening right in front of us and right around the corner in terms of legislation. A blanket immunity would not be good."
Making this tiny change in how you use social networks will make you 98%...
"When we look at the experimental data, weak ties are better, on average, for job mobility than strong ties."
Executive Education
Machine Learning in Business
Machine learning, a branch of artificial intelligence, is the science of programming computers to improve their performance by learning from data. Dramatic progress has been made in the last decade, driving machine learning into the spotlight of conversations surrounding disruptive technology. This six-week online program from the MIT Sloan School of Management and the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) aims to demystify machine learning for the business professional – offering you a firm, foundational understanding of the advantages, limitations, and scope of machine learning from a management perspective.
- Oct 4-Nov 21, 2023
- Apr 4-May 21, 2024
- Oct 16-Dec 3, 2024
- Aug 7-Sep 24, 2024
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- Jun 5-Jul 23, 2024
Digital Marketing Analytics
This program provides you with an overview of the best approaches and practices in digital marketing measurements and analysis, and offers an understanding of how these tools can be integrated to inform strategic direction.
- Aug 30-Oct 17, 2023
- Feb 21-Apr 9, 2024
- Oct 2-Nov 19, 2024
- Jun 19-Aug 27, 2024
- Aug 28-Nov 19, 2024
- Jul 10-Aug 27, 2024
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